“In private and exasperated moments Germans have a name for us (the British): the inselaffen, or ‘island monkeys’ – unpredictable, backward, quarrelsome and isolated. “It’s not common, especially in polite company.

“A senior British diplomat assured me that it has not been used for decades.

“He should try looking at social media, where the term has mushroomed since Brexit………..”

The Pareto Principle asserts that, in the majority of systems, around 80% of effects arise from around 20% of causes.

The principle has been found to apply in computer science, biology, physics, economics and many other fields.

A King’s College London study of 1000 children carried out over 35 years has concluded that the 80-20 rule applies also to human development and its costs to society.

A 45 minute test at the age of three sought to gauge intelligence, language and motor skills, as well as to assess the children’s levels of tolerance, restlessness, impulsiveness and social disadvantage.

It found that by age 38 around 20% of the 1000 children were responsible for 81% of the group’s overall criminal convictions, three quarters of its drug prescriptions, two thirds of welfare benefits payments and more than half of nights in hospital.

One of the many difficulties lies in clarifying the precise wording of the question asked of the people.

It must, most would agree, be straightforward, understandable and clear.

Above all, it should be succinct.

Italians go to the polls on Sunday 4th December to answer a referendum question which is none of the above.

It is, translated into English:

“Do you approve the text of the Constitutional Law concerning ‘dispositions for the overcoming of equal bicameralism, the reduction of the number of parliamentarians, the containment of the running costs of the institutions, the suppression of the National Economic and Labour Council and the review of title V of Part II of the Constitution’ approved by Parliament and publicised in Gazzetta ufficiale n.88 on 15 April 2016?”

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to stand for a fourth term has been covered in media round the world.

And much of this coverage has been in countries which have quite different names for Germany as we call it or Deutschland, the name Germans favour.

In Scandinavian languages Germany is Tyskland; in France, Allemagne; in Italy Germania, although Italians call Germans Tedesci; in Polish, Niemcy; in Finnish, Saksa, in the Czech Republic, Nemecko and in Latvia, Vacija. There are many more other names.

Hilary Clinton’s health may have an impact on the forthcoming US Presidential election result.
Health is certainly an issue in politics.

In 1924, following the death of Lenin, his potential successor Leon Trotsky was being treated over the course of two weeks for dysentery in Crimea permitting his rival, Josef Stalin, to take control of the Soviet Communist Party’s machinery in Moscow.

In the UK, without Clement Atlee’s peptic ulcer, the Labour Party might have won the 1951 election, and the Suez Crisis of 1955, which reduced significantly Britain’s global standing, most likely would have been avoided.
Endless examples illustrate the point.